


Tower

by PJStories



Category: Original Work
Genre: Adventure & Romance, Angst, Angst and Humor, Angst with a Happy Ending, Declarations Of Love, Fairy Tale Elements, Fairy Tale Retellings, Fantasy, First Kiss, First Love, First Time, Gay, Gay Sex, Gender Roles, Genderbending, Genderplay, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Misgendering, Mistaken Identity, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Romance, Secret Past, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Slow Romance, Sweet/Hot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-16 14:08:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29455041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PJStories/pseuds/PJStories
Summary: Most people at twelve find out that fairy tales aren't true, but not Drisel. Stolen away from his home, locked up in a gods' forsaken tower guarded by a dragon in the middle of a lake of fire, he wasn't just aware that fairy tales were real. He was living in one, and it was hell.Sold to a witch to cover a debt, Drisel was the first male prisoner that Esheva's tower had ever held, and it showed. From the lack of a blade to cut his growing locks to the complete dearth of any clothing other than dresses and dainty slippers, the young son of a duke didn't belong here, wasting away his adolescence in isolation. In an act of desperation, on the night of his eighteenth birthday, he prayed with all his fervor, wishing on the stars that he might escape, return to the home he had never stopped missing. When that prayer is answered in the form of a handsome, young dragon-slayer with a shady past and a flood of emotional troubles barely contained by a sullen soldier's discipline, had he merely traded one set of problems for another? Would he be able to rule his own emotions well enough to help save his savior? And once they got back, if they ever did, what would become of the man he was slowly falling in love with?
Relationships: Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	Tower

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Valentine's Day!
> 
> This is my first safe for work/non-pornographic story I've posted to this site. I hope it won't disappoint. Please read the tags, and as always: kudos, comment, subscribe!
> 
> Trigger warnings: intentional misgendering (of a cis man being forced to wear women's clothing), misogyny
> 
> This is an original work, and as such all rights are maintained by me. Do not share or copy this story without consent. Check the end notes for information on my update schedule and the other works on this account.
> 
> Enjoy! :)

There was not an inch of the room that I hadn’t memorized. Even blindfolded I could find anything between the high stone walls of the bedroom I was lazing in, staring at the ceiling whose every crack and crevice I knew intimately, but then I’d been stuck in this room for six long years. Entombed here, with little to no hope of ever leaving. 

The room was sizeable, with rich furnishings. A silver mirror inlaid with sapphires hung behind a copper claw-foot tub. Two heavy bookshelves rode tall along the wall with a trove of leather bound volumes on a wide coterie of subjects. A large wardrobe carved from ancient cedars stood opposite a loom and a spinning wheel that I had never used. Every surface I had touched in a search for novelty that had quickly ended. 

The familiar roar from downstairs signaled dinner time. I set aside the book on herblore I had been half-reading and waited for my jailer to open the door. The blue silk curtains of the four poster bed shrouded my upper body as I perched on the mattress, my back nestled in pillows. I preferred for him not to see me, or at least not clearly. It would be unseemly for someone lowborn to see the desperation I could not hold back from my eyes. Six years of isolation, my sole conversations the quick words of my jailer, whose jargon was worse than his smell. He loved nothing more than to goad me into a fight, but tonight I wouldn’t let him do it. I sat stiff and composed with a hard-taught grace that had been drilled into me since childhood. 

The jangling of keys echoed in the hallway. I never knew why he had so many keys when mine was the only cell in the tower.

“Stand back where I can sees you!” he yelled through the wooden door. “I’m comin’ with supper.”

He opened the door with a huff. The heavy wood clanged against the stone with a crash that reverberated along the marble floor. 

“Hidin’ again, I see,” he said. “It’s not as though you’re shy. Why always behind them curtains?”

“I appreciate distance,” I replied, staring at the bedpost opposite me. 

“The last girl we had in here wasn’t so prudish. She’d actually talk. Humble little thing. Though she wasn’t as pretty as you, so I suppose she couldn’t be as proud.”

“I’m a man,” I said, turning to face him. Anger stole away some of my grace. 

He snickered, crossing his arms in victory. “Well with your dress and your pretty locks it’s an easy mistake.”

“It’s not my fault that your mistress chose to launder her prison with nothing but women’s clothes. Would you have me stand around naked all day like a beast? And I have not been given the privilege to hold a blade in six long years, so the state of my locks, as you put it, is beyond my control.”

“You can’t even grow a beard.”

“What of it? I’m only seventeen. And for all I know your witch of a mistress put a curse on me to keep me looking young and pure like the maidens you usually imprison here.”

He laughed at that, a great roaring laugh that shook the room. “Aye lad, we do keep maidens here, but there be no curse. Esheva don’t care what you look like, only the gold you’re worth. So your fine features and long brown hair are just the gods’ way of saying you should’a been a woman. Aside from your parts down there you are a maiden, boy, and those can always be tucked aside.”

“You can’t talk to me like that!” I sputtered. “My great-grandfather was King of Salgeria. My father is the Duke of Delan. I am a nobleman and you will not speak to me like that, you swine!”

“You’re a prude bitch, and all the blood and relations in the world won’t get you out of this tower. Not before your drunken, gambling father has paid Esheva her due.”

“Don’t speak about my father that way!” I snapped. All grace and decorum were lost in blind fury. 

He laughed even harder this time. I thought about taking the fork from the tray in his hands and gouging out his eyes. 

“What? The truth? Does it prickle the princess’s ears to hear what a stupid git her father is?”

“Get out!” I screamed. 

He bowed in mock deference. “Of course, m’lady. Whatever you please. Enjoy your dinner.”

He slammed the door behind him, and I heard the click of the lock before his thumping footsteps trailed down the stairs. His laughter hung in the air like a foul odor, perforating the stone walls. Too furious to eat, I thought about throwing the plate at the door but decided better. It would gain me nothing but an empty stomach and a hard time of cleaning tomorrow. I kicked myself for letting him get to me again. He was cruel and coarse, unlike anyone I had had to deal with before, but still I should rise above. What would my mother say if she had seen me so emotional? Though if my mother were alive I would never have ended up here. 

I caught my reflection in the mirror in passing and couldn’t help but look. It was true. I did look like a woman, but it wasn’t my fault! My hair had grown long in six years, stretching past my shoulders, almost down to my hips. I longed to cut it, to wear it fashionably as I used to, to not have to spend time everyday brushing it so it wouldn’t get tangled or knotted. More than anything I longed for pants. The only items of clothing in the wardrobe were gowns. Gowns for sleeping, gowns for sewing, gowns of all sizes and colors. 

I was the first male they’d ever held in this witch’s tower, but my father had no daughters and deep debts. Not all of it was from gambling. Much of my father’s gold had gone to the war effort, but the drinking and gambling habits he’d picked up after my mother’s passing hadn’t helped matters. Then our lands were blighted by droughts, ruining our crops year after year. Out of money and fearing the ever growing mob of peasants at our doorstep, my father had gone to the sorceress Esheva so that she could end our drought with her magic. She said she could do it, but for a price that would have made even the king balk. My father had told her he couldn’t come up with that amount of money in time for the next growing season, and she said that she could cast the spell now so long as she had some collateral. His first-born daughter. My father had signed her contract right away, thinking he’d gotten off scot free. He didn’t have a daughter, and after his battle injury he knew that he would never sire another child. Unfortunately my father failed to read the fine print of the witch’s contract. Specifically the line that her henchmen had read to him when they came for me, “If no daughters he has, a son will do.”

So at twelve I was carried from my home, driven days away, up into the mountains, and locked in this gods forsaken tower, guarded by a dragon in the middle of a lake of fire. Usually at twelve you find out that fairy tales aren’t true, but not me. I was living in one, and it was hell. 

I threw my head into my pillows and screamed for all I was worth, and then I lied there as the sun faded behind the mountains. The glow from the lava surrounding the little island the tower was perched on the only light in the moonless night. I sat staring at the ceiling, tracing the lines I’d memorized as my anger simmered. 

I padded my way over to my plate in the dark, picking at the bread and mutton. It was the same almost every supper. Occasionally there was fowl or pork, but sheep were the most plentiful in the hills at the base of the mountain, the closest area that was inhabited. There was a trader from a nearby village who brought all of the goods to the tower. I could see him walking the path along the mountain from the window by the bed. I had called down to him before, but the warden had been the only one to call back, so I’d given up. I wished more than anything that I could taste fish again. There had been a stream I used to fish as a boy, and just to have trout or pike would be like going home, and such a relief from mutton. 

At the thought of wishing I had a sudden flash. I ran to the bookcase and pulled off the black leather bound book that had become my journal. On the first page I had kept a tally of the days I had been here, checking off every day when I awoke in the morning. I took a second to count the days, and when I’d reached the number I couldn’t help but cry. Today was my eighteenth birthday. Another birthday spent locked away, arguing with a louse. I was a man now, a man kept in dresses in an isolated prison cell. I tried to stifle my tears, because I knew if I started crying I wouldn’t be able to stop, but they kept coming, running down my face like raindrops on a window pane. I sat on my knees and prayed to the gods that I would be rescued. Prayed with all of the fervor I had. I pleaded that I wouldn’t have to spend another year in this prison. 

I must have cried myself to sleep, for when I woke, stretched sideways along my bed, it was still dark outside. I craned my ears to try and detect the sound that had awoken me, and then I placed it. Footsteps coming from outside. 

I peered out of the window to see a strange man with blonde hair walking up to the tower door. It was the first man aside from the trader or warden that I’d seen in six years. Was he a messenger come to collect me? Had my father finally found enough money to pay the witch? 

He brandished a great sword and a kite shield as he came to the door, and then he kicked the burly door in. 

This was no messenger. This was an invasion. 

The roar of the dragon from the bottom of the tower was deafening. Awakened from its slumber, the beast was startled and angry. I could feel the heat of the dragon’s fire rising from the floor below. The man must be dead by now. Surely no one man could kill a black dragon in close quarters like that, but the beast continued to roar, so maybe he lived yet. It went on for a while longer until with a deafening shriek the roars stopped. The dragon was dead.

I panicked. Any man who could kill a dragon was no match for me. I didn’t even have a blade. How could I possibly defend myself? Strangle him with the sheets? Drown him in the bathtub? Stab him in the throat with a dull fork? Why was he here? Was he looking for treasure? Surely he’d heard about the dragon-guarded tower and suspected there was gold stored away, or jewels, something worth more than the son of a duke and the withered rotting corpse of a prison guard who watched over him. 

Maybe if I just lied down and pretended to be asleep he’d leave me alone. I scrambled back to my bed, pushing down my dress and brushing my hair out to look as though I’d been soundly sleeping. I had just closed my eyes when I heard the lock being turned. 

The door swung open and unfamiliar footsteps resounded off of the marble floor. They stopped, and I could feel my pulse rising. I tried to keep my breathing soft and shallow though I felt terrified, more awake than I had ever been. _Please leave_ , I thought. _I’m no threat to you, just go._ But the footsteps drew nearer. 

He was approaching the bed, drawing back the curtain, and I was trying my hardest to appear asleep. I knew my eyes were closed too tightly, my breathing too unnatural, and I steeled myself for the touch of a blade on my skin…

But what I felt instead was a moist heat enveloping my lips. A feeling I had never felt before as his lips pressed against mine. 

I lost myself for a moment in the sweetness of it before I realized what was going on. My eyes widened as the dragon slayer’s kiss continued, and I felt myself begin to scream. 

His eyes were closed, and his face was covered in sweat and soot that he had barely wiped off. I felt his hands press against my shoulders, pinning me to the bed as the kiss deepened, and I writhed under the pressure. His eyes snapped open and he pulled back, looking sheepish and startled. 

“M’lady,” he said in a husky baritone. “My kiss awakened you from your enchanted sleep. I’ve come to rescue you.”

_Rescue me?_

He suddenly looked closer, staring at me with a puzzled look that slowly gave way to shock and revulsion. 

“Wait. You’re no lady at all. You’re a man!”

**Author's Note:**

> I post new stories or updates of current stories every Sunday and most Wednesdays. Feel free to check out work from my other pseuds: MasculineSuccubus, which is where I post mpreg erotica, and FatherFaulker, where I post mpreg erotica with incest (yes, I needed an extra pseud to differentiate the two, and yes, everything I write is mpreg). Only PJStories (my main pseud) posts non-explicit content, so venture farther onto my channel at your own peril!


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